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by squiggleblaz 2418 days ago
Because I feel the other answers, though correct, are entirely missing out on clarity:

The first iteration looks like this:

<file head -n10 | grep foo | tr baz qux

The second iteration looks like this:

<file gzcat | head -n10 | grep foo | tr baz qux

It makes the change much easier, since the first thing written is the first thing that happens. In `gzcat < file`, the logical first step - reading and streaming file - is now the physical second step. Like a German sentence, whenever you want to prepend the file, you have to maintain an item in second position.